SALTILLO, Coahuila, July 24, 2008.- The National Team of Dominican Republic defeated Costa Rica in consecutive sets, closing the preliminary and advancing to the semi finals of the NORCECA Women’s Junior Volleyball Tournament.

In just 58 minutes, the shortest match of the event, the Dominicans secured their third straight win by score of 25-9, 25-20, 25-14. They dominated Pool A with nine sets won and Orly two lost (276-206 in points ratio).

The best scorers of the tournament were the Caribbeans Jeoselyna Rodríguez (13), and Marifranchi Rodríguez and Lisvel Eve Mejía with 10 apiece. For Costa Rica, Angie Arias had 6.

Enrique Larrazaleta, coach of Dominican Republic: “Congratulation to the Costa Ricans, they never were down and gave their best all the time, but I think the country has to make an effort to recruit taller players, that’s their weakness because technically they are well, only if they had more height.”

“I think we must play against Puerto Rico or Canada in the first cross, and the final must be against my countrywomen of Cuba.”

“We came with great desire of qualifying, this is a tall team with good projection and big production even that on the playing court only two were born in 1990, the rest are of ’91, most of them are very tall and they must make the training national team very quickly.”

“Our goal is to win the ticket to the 2009 World Championship here in this nation and for them to have another year of training and development.”

Julio C. Alfaro, coach of Costa Rica: “Our opponents form a great team with a good coach, and we congratulate them, we tried to do our best, I am happier than yesterday because they tried harder, in our previous game we were down, but with what we have I think we made the attempt although we recognize they are superior and we are learning from them with each day.”

Allison Ramírez, captain of Costa Rica: “I think it was a pretty game because we competed, at least in the second, but we are happy because it was against the first team of overthere and I feel we did what we Could, you have to wait the future.”

Niverka Marte, captain of Dominican Republic: “Costa Rica is a fighting team, they never let their spirit to go down. We tried to do our best for each player to improve even more in the individual ranking.”